Part the Fourth be with you
May. 3rd, 2014 04:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceSo this week's Big Bang Theory was all about Star Wars Day; and tomorrow of course is your actual May the Fourth; and I do not suppose that it is entirely coincidental that when I needed to rename the chunk of Kipling that I'm working on, I didn't even think. I just saved it as "A New Beginning."
Hey-ho. I may be more of a fan than I knew I was. Tho' I can't actually remember the last time I binged on a rewatch. Original trilogy only, of course. That was how I first saw Return of the Jedi, at an all-day triple-bill showing in the biggest surviving cinema in Newcastle; and it was how I soothed my soul the only time I ever spent Christmas on my own, with a friend's video tapes and a bottle of port. And a lobster. Come to think of it, you're never alone with a lobster. These days I do have my own DVDs (original theatre releases, naturally: I cannot be doing with a universe in which it could even be a question whether or not Han shot first), and I'd be astonished if Karen didn't also. But for me at least, it's been a long time since I actually sat down and watched them.
What strikes me, though, is that I really have no notion of sitting down to watch one of them. I'd no more do that than I'd read one volume of The Lord of the Rings, or one of the Aubrey/Maturin books, or watch one part of Kill Bill. I have friends who would do any of those quite happily - or more, flick through a book just to reread favourite chapters, or skip through a movie to see particular scenes - but that just totally offends my notion of narrative propriety. I hate coming in late to the middle of a story, and I hate leaving before the end, and I think it's just rude to skip stuff in the middle*. (Which being said, I have seen Star Wars parts one through three once each, as an expression of courtesy, and I'll be perfectly happy if I die before seeing any of them again; I don't regard Part Four as "coming in late". It's a new beginning, it says so, and that's good enough for me.)
*"The Piper at the Gates of Dawn", anyone? I may have been the only child I knew who not only read that chapter of The Wind in the Willows but reread it every time I read the book.
Hey-ho. I may be more of a fan than I knew I was. Tho' I can't actually remember the last time I binged on a rewatch. Original trilogy only, of course. That was how I first saw Return of the Jedi, at an all-day triple-bill showing in the biggest surviving cinema in Newcastle; and it was how I soothed my soul the only time I ever spent Christmas on my own, with a friend's video tapes and a bottle of port. And a lobster. Come to think of it, you're never alone with a lobster. These days I do have my own DVDs (original theatre releases, naturally: I cannot be doing with a universe in which it could even be a question whether or not Han shot first), and I'd be astonished if Karen didn't also. But for me at least, it's been a long time since I actually sat down and watched them.
What strikes me, though, is that I really have no notion of sitting down to watch one of them. I'd no more do that than I'd read one volume of The Lord of the Rings, or one of the Aubrey/Maturin books, or watch one part of Kill Bill. I have friends who would do any of those quite happily - or more, flick through a book just to reread favourite chapters, or skip through a movie to see particular scenes - but that just totally offends my notion of narrative propriety. I hate coming in late to the middle of a story, and I hate leaving before the end, and I think it's just rude to skip stuff in the middle*. (Which being said, I have seen Star Wars parts one through three once each, as an expression of courtesy, and I'll be perfectly happy if I die before seeing any of them again; I don't regard Part Four as "coming in late". It's a new beginning, it says so, and that's good enough for me.)
*"The Piper at the Gates of Dawn", anyone? I may have been the only child I knew who not only read that chapter of The Wind in the Willows but reread it every time I read the book.